A Cooperative Experience to Promote Innovation of Citizenship Education in Elementary Schools in Chile

3 David Herrera, MSc, Department of Education, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile, david.herrera@usach.cl Abstract: This paper analyzes the results of the cooperative work done by university faculty, schoolteachers and a ministry‟s technical team in an attempt to promote innovation on citizenship education. The work consisted on designing units of instruction on citizenship education in three subject matter curricula. These units of instruction were then applied in ten low socio-economic urban public schools in Santiago, Chile. The participants were 30 fifth grade teachers. A qualitative approach was applied which considered a collective case study. Class observations were conducted. The main results showed that: (a) teaching was directed to make learning about citizenship education more relevant to students, (b) teaching was directed to develop student ́s agency and empowerment; (c) content class connected in-school learning to out-of school living; and monitoring progress is performed in a very constrained manner.


Introduction
During the last three decades, public policies in Chile have promoted the improvement of the quality of student learning, particularly in state schools. These policies are intended to help students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to continue higher education or help them to enter into the world of work with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to contribute to economic development. In Chile, as in many other countries, the quality of teaching has been shown to make an essential contribution to enhancing the quality of education and students" achievements (Haynes, 2011). It is argued that teachers are key players to innovation processes; therefore their actions can improve the processes and educational results of their students. Thus, educational policies have placed schools, management teams and, especially teachers at the center of the transformations.
Pedagogical innovation in citizenship education, the same as other educational initiatives, assumes that the change of pedagogical practice must be directed to the importance of rescuing the ideas, practices, decision making, interventions, and joint creation processes as a way of confronting current challenges in the classroom with the purpose of modifying attitudes, thoughts, contents, models, and practices rooted in the school, which must be restated within the framework of restating and restructuring (Ríos & Araya, 2016). This means that innovation in citizenship education implies advancing in the construction of a work oriented to generate sustained deep changes.
Educational practice is of equal value with knowledge when we come to tackle citizenship education. One of the major flaws in citizenship education has been that it fails to bring democracy to life in schools, and remains at the stage of merely enunciating principles and describing institutions. When the organization of a school does not lead to a democratic mode of operating on which pupils can give their opinions, children and adolescents lose interest in citizenship and see only the mismatch between what adults say and what they do, between knowledge and action.
In this context, the purpose of this paper is presenting the main results of the experience in pedagogical innovation in citizenship education for fifth-year students. This is a first approach which purpose was to design, implement, and reflect on educational experiences oriented at strengthening citizenship education learning goals in the classroom. The main objective of the project was to identify the cross-curricular objectives of the National Curriculum and make explicit the way these connected to citizenship education. Then, these objectives were developed in a Didactic Unit that was implemented in schools.
The discussion of this paper has been organized in three main sections. First, it will discuss the research context and will provide a brief overview of the phases of the project. This paper will discuss phase 2, The Implementation of the Didactic Unit. Then, it will present the theoretical framework providing information about the methodology applied in the study. Finally, a discussion of the findings is provided.

The research context
In recent years one of the most important public educational policies in Chile have been aimed at guaranteeing spaces for democratic coexistence and citizen participation at school. In 2016, Law 20.911 mandated the 'Development of Citizenship Education Plans" as a way of responding to the demand by society on the challenges that the educational system must assume to support the training of citizens responsible for and committed to democracy (MINEDUC, 2016a(MINEDUC, , 2016bUNDP, 2015;ICCS-IEA, 2010;MINEDUC, 2009aMINEDUC, , 2009b.
The development of a participative culture that involves the educational actors has generated a national challenge to confront citizenship learnings at school. In this sense the citizenship education is conceived as cross-curriculum objectives of the National Curriculum. The purpose of these are forming people with ethical and democratic principles and behaviors so that the school may become an institution having an educational role that allows delivering tools to the students for the development of an education for citizenship. This innovation is directed to carry out concrete educational actions through the construction of a didactic unit that reinforces the development of citizenship, ethics, and a democratic culture at school.
The "Citizenship Education Plan" must promote the appropriation of significant tools and skills in four action fields, namely: (a) the construction of autonomy and self-confidence oriented at the ability to make decisions; (b) consolidating practices of healthy and respectful social coexistence, contributing as citizens to strengthen democracy by participating in and valuing diversity; (c) deepening an ethical education to consolidate a coexistence supported by the principles of tolerance, transparency, cooperation, and freedom; and (d) contributing to the country"s progress from a sustainable economic development. 1 Therefore, a proposal intended to make visible the Cross-Curricular Objectives (OAT) and the Learning Objectives (OA) as a possibility of consolidating citizenship education to accomplish with the Citizenship Plan was developed. Fifth grade teachers and a team of 5 faculty members from the Education Department of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, worked collaboratively to propose curricular designs, didactic strategies, and learning activities considering the possibilities provided by Cross-Curricular Objectives (Objetivos de Aprendizaje Transversal) 2 (OAT), and Learning Objectives (Objetivos de Aprendizaje) 3 (OA) of the National Curriculum (MINEDUC, 2012(MINEDUC, , 2013. For the development of pedagogical innovation, the project was articulated from the collaborative work methodology, which allows advancing in cooperation and interaction instances, promoting the subjective exchange of meanings and decision making (Badia & García, 2006;Johnson & Johnson, 2004). It also promotes individual responsibility and social skills practices oriented to strengthening critical and self-critical thought related to the creation of self-evaluation and group evaluation spaces (Johnson & Johnson, 2004).
The project was characterized by being a co-construction of a month-long didactic unit that considered the collaboration between teachers of the disciplines, pedagogic coordinators of the different participating schools, and university faculty. The co-construction took place by carrying out workshops for the design of the didactic innovations, accompanying activities during their implementation, and later reflection meetings on the development of the experiments and the results obtained.
The project was aimed at developing and implementing a didactic proposal for the schools, taking into account their educational and 1 These fields are present in the recommendations arising from the Presidential Advisory Council Against Conflicts of Interest, Traffic of Influence, and Corruption (Consejo Asesor Presidencial Contra los Conflictos de Interés, el Tráfico de Influencias y la Corrupción) (CAPCCITIC, 2015). Final report. Recovered from http://consejoanticorrupcion.cl/lanzamiento-final/, octubre 2016. 2 The Learning Objectives are objectives that define the terminal learnings expected for a given subject for every school year. They refer to the skills, attitudes, and knowledge aimed at favoring the integral development of the students (MINEDUC, 2013). 3 The "Cross-Curricular Objectives" (Objetivos de Aprendizaje Transversal) refers to the general and integral development that must be achieved by all the subjects of the national curriculum to generate learnings in the fields of personal, intellectual, moral, and social development of the children and youngsters. fundamental role as consolidators of new social practices. Therefore, the spirit of the innovative proposal is meant to get the participation of the main stakeholders of the educational community to reflect in practice, on the most adequate methodologies, and strategies for promoting significant learning oriented to the reinforcement of a democratic culture of the 21 st century.

Phases of the project
This pedagogical innovation project oriented to strengthening the citizenship learnings in 5 th grade students was applied between November 2016 to October 2017. The intention was to design, implement, and evaluate an educational innovation proposal in Citizenship Education which, through collaborative and reflexive work between teachers, faculty professors and a ministry"s technical team, would prepare a Didactic Unit in the disciplines of History, Geography and Social Science, Physical Education and Health, and Language and Communication.
To achieve its goal, the proposal was articulated into three phases: 1) The Didactic Unit design which involved working with key players: teachers, Technical Pedagogical Unit 4 (UTP) heads, directors, and representatives of Municipal Education Corporations; 2) The Implementation of the Didactic Unit. It was focused on the implementation of the Didactic Unit developed by teachers of each subject; and 3) Systematization and Dissemination of good practice in this area. It sought to reinforce the dialogic exchange between teachers, sharing the strategies that were considered to be the most successful, evaluating the implementation of the project, and providing space for a theoretical, conceptual, practical, and real discussion on the importance of the work done as a way of contributing to students" achievement. As stated earlier, this paper will present Phase 2.

Theoretical framework
The foundational premise of "being a citizen" is that it is constituted and conforms with linking processes dependent on the socialization existing in different spaces and formal and informal contexts: the family, the school, the quarter, identity groups, ethnical, religious, spiritual, social, and communitarian movements that constitute the social fabric and offer unique opportunities to consolidate citizenship learnings (Espínola, 2005;Galston, 2004Galston, , 2001Kymlicka & Norman, 1997;Reimers, 2006).
Meanwhile, the school has the advantage of offering a space for subjectivization and symbolization in which not only the meaning of what being a citizen implies, but also the first dimensions of the citizenship experience is lived (Bauman, 2009;Fishman & Haas, 2012;Hargreaves, 2003;Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Shulz, 2001). It offers the largest number of opportunities for developing a civic knowledge that promotes democratic values and active and informed participation, and the cognitive skills required to make rational judgments when facing the problems and challenges imposed by the citizen condition (Galston, 2001).
School experience refers to the participation and expression spaces that are generated within the school and to the climate in which the relations between authorities and students are developed, as a way of forcing a democratic view in the school, in the sense that education is the fundamental method for progress and equitable social reform (Osler & Starkey, 2006;Tonge, Mycock, & Jeffery, 2012;UNESCO, 2009). In this field, research has reached important conclusions on the positive correlation that there is between the citizens" commitment and a climate organized from democratic and not authoritarian relations between the different members of the educational community (principals, teachers, administrators, students and families). It has also been made clear that the willingness of young people to participate in politics is positively related to the existence of educational spaces that stimulate the students" active participation, both in the classroom and in decision making within the school (Callahan, Muller, & Schiller, 2010;Isaac, Maslowski, & Van der Werf, 2011;Lin, 2015;Ranson, 2012).
In this sense, research has shown that there is a positive relation between political commitment and the curricula that promote the importance of the democratic system and reinforce the qualities of good citizens; at the same time impelling the development of reflexive, investigative, and communicative skills that allow participating in discussions on controversial and general interest issues, and becoming committed in the organizations of civil society (Isaac et al., 2014).
On the other hand, the learning opportunities are also related to the training and abilities of the teachers to design and implement the classroom experience oriented to citizenship education. Therefore, evidence points out that teacher training is a key element for the quality and effectiveness of the educational process, especially in relation to the planning and execution of educational processes aligned with the curricular objectives and with the generation of a classroom climate open to the participation of the students through democratic interactions in the classroom (Coleman, 2014;Isaac et Tudball & Forsyth, 2009;UNESCO, 2015).
It is under these premises that schools appear not only as spaces for subjectivation, symbolization, and meanings of what it is to be a citizen, but they also offer the first real and concrete citizen experience (Fishman & Haas, 2012;Huddleston & Kerr, 2005;Kerr, 2015).

Participants
The innovation considered the participation of 30 teachers from 10 municipal schools with a population of students from low socioeconomic background located in the city of Santiago, Chile. They were teachers of History, Geography and Social Science, Physical Education and Health, and Language and Communication. The proportion was 75% women and 25% men. Of the total number, 30% were teachers with less than five years of professional practice and 70% had six or more years as teachers.

Data collection and analysis
To analyze the implementation of the curricular designs in the classroom prepared by the teachers for the development of Citizenship Training in 5 th year, a qualitative methodological approach was used (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011;Flick, Von Kardorff, & Steinke, 2004), since the aim was to know the experience of a social group in a given context (Marshall & Rossman, 2011). Specifically, the research design corresponds to a collective (Stake, 2005) or multiple (Neiman & Quaranta, 2006) case study, because the focus is placed on a specific population formed in different groups of schools.
The information that was going to be analyzed came from the application of an observation rubric, validated by expert judgment in the selected schools, which was prepared jointly with school"s teachers.. The rubric"s main theme is citizenship education, and its principal focuses are: (1) the effective implementation of the learning objectives and cross-curricular objectives related to citizenship education; (2) learning environment (3) the allocation and use of instructional time; and (4) monitoring progress on citizenship education. The validation process consisted of meetings between the ministry"s technical team and the university"s professors, generating a coconstruction according to the guidelines, needs and orientations determined by the described observation focuses. The observation guidelines were applied on 61 opportunities, considering the three subjects of Language and Communication, Physical Education and Health, and History, Geography and Social Science. This number represents the total interpreted documents which were coded with the NVivo, version 11, qualitative analysis software.
The main results of this experience are summarized below. The results will be presented as a function of the approached objectives described in the observation pattern that was used for collecting the data.The results will be presented using a number for each school. Thus, School one will be presented as S1, School 2, as S2 until to S10.

Findings
The purpose of this study was to analyze the implementation phase of an innovation on education citizenship implemented in 5 th grade. From the evidence collected and analyzed, the main results are presented in relation to the focuses established in the rubric.

Focus I: Effective implementation of learning and cross-curricular objectives related to citizenship education
The first focus of the rubric had the purpose of evaluating the effective implementation of the curriculum associated with citizenship education. Therefore, aspects such as purposeful teaching, active methodologies, and students" participation on their own learning were part of the rubric.
Analyzing the data it is possible to argue that most teachers showed a purposeful teaching. The data analyzed show that teachers" practices were directed to make learning about citizenship education more relevant to students. However, the manner the goal of the class was presented to the students differed from teacher to teacher, as evidenced in the following observations: The activities are developed in favor of approaching citizenship education. At the beginning, the class talks about responsibility, respect, leadership, family, school and citizen relations. During the class there are pauses to reflect on citizens approaches that can be given to the activities performed. At the end the required time is taken for the class group to talk about what they have experienced and their reflections (School 1).
The teacher states the purpose of the class: "We respect intellectual property as an honest value for a better civic life" (School 3). At the beginning of the class, the teacher had the objective written on the board: "Valuing life in society as a dimension...". Then she reads the objective of the class: Demonstrate civic attitudes in actions of daily life (School 5).
In the rest of the classes, teachers complemented the reading of the class objective by asking the students questions or by activating previous knowledge or everyday experience: The teacher writes the objective on the board: Recognizing positive and negative pedestrian conducts. Based on this, the teacher asks what we are going to understand by pedestrian, so this generates a joint definition among the different students. Then they watch a video of cartoons on traffic regulations. From the video, the students identify the positive behaviors they must follow as pedestrians. They are identified and stated to the class as if it were a plenum (School 4).
Regarding active methodologies, the data show the following: Students have a very active and constant role during the class. A large part of their participation took place through students posing themes and commenting on other students" opinions. They constantly try to contribute their own personal experiences, where the teacher responds through conceptual reflections (School 10).

Focus II: Promotion of a learning environment
The second focus of the guideline analyzed students" involvement and teacher"s ability to promote a classroom climate that favors citizenship learning. The results of this section show that, in general, the dialog spaces were constant during the whole session, representing a systematic and meaningful practice attempting to integrate the cross-curricular objectives that contribute directly to citizenship education. Through encouraging dialog and students" participation on the curriculum of the class, teachers were promoting students" agency and empowerment in a democratic environment.
Regarding a learning environment, most of the students participated actively in a respectful classroom climate that favored citizenship learning. They usually turned to be very involved in the educational process.
The class is highly participative and receptive. They get involved actively in the development of each of the class activities (answers to initiation questions, responses between the rights and the associated duties, preparation/presentation of cartoons and at the closure, especially from the generated meta-evaluation and self-evaluation) (School 6).
The students participate actively, giving instructions to each other to improve the game. They are constantly organized, and are available for solving problems (School 4).
In this context, it is important to point out that teachers used varied strategies aimed at promoting students" participation. The main strategy was posing questions and analyzing answers. Other strategies were carrying out group activities. Besides that, content class connected in-school learning to out of school living.
However, there were some classes that showed a very limited range of students" participation with an important number of students who remained alienated from the activities.
The interaction between the teacher and the students can be considered problematic insofar that the class cannot continue, and there are constant interruptions (School 2). The students did not respect the opinions of their classmates and, constantly, there were out of context discussions among the students (School 3).
Despite the differences observed between schools, it is clear that in most cases the teachers promote an appropriate classroom climate for the generation of significant learning in matters of citizenship training.

Focus III: The allocation and use of instructional time
The third focus of the guideline had the purpose of examining the conditions of the class, the teacher"s actions and decisions meant to achieve good profiting of the time for learning and teaching. The evidence shows that in most cases, the teachers used the instructional time adequately, following what was established in the curricular design and performing the activities in a logical order, a situation that is presented below: The teacher organizes time in an effective manner, providing the appropriate spaces for the opinions and participation of the students. Similarly, he gives the proper time for group discussion by the students during the development of the activity and the later closure of the class from the presentations of the students and the overview of the contents made by the teacher (School 10).
The third focus also inquired on the role of the students in carrying out the activities proposed for the Citizenship Training. In a large part of the studied cases, the students had an active and leading role in the teachinglearning process, participating in the activities and following the teachers" instructions, especially those linked to the creation of cartoons, posters, texts, and representations or dramatizations on "being a citizen." Students participate actively in the class, they watch and comment the videos, answer the teacher"s questions, share their own experiences, and link them with citizenship training, especially when the teacher relates respect and active listening as a citizen"s attitude (School 10).
The interaction between the students and the teacher is given in the framework of trust and respect, maintaining their freedom to ask questions as well as to express opinions and make their personal life contributions (School 4).
The active participation of students implies their having a respectful attitude toward their peers and teacher, promoting the creation of a significant learning space for the students.

Focus IV: Monitoring the achievement of citizenship learning
The objective of the fourth focus of the guideline was to analyze those teachers" conditions, actions, and decisions that can be noticed in the classroom, aimed at observing, supervising, and evaluating their students" work. Regarding its first dimension, relative to the interaction between teachers and students for citizenship learning, the evidence shows that feedback was mostly permanent during the class, strengthening the learning on citizenship.
The active methodology of the class allowed the students to feel protagonists of their own learning, posing and answering questions from the teacher and from themselves (School 10).
The teacher emphasizes the importance of respect in each of their feedbacks, and points out that this is a citizen"s value (School 4).
The second dimension of the focus is related to the involvement of the students in the process of assessing their own learning. In most cases the students were involved positively, responding to the issues brought up by the teachers or reflecting on the subjects taught.
Some students respond actively to the questions, and they reflect on the ways of coexisting at school and in the family (School 5).
On the other hand, there were some examples of students" disengagement on the process of assessing their own performance.
In general terms, there was no great interest in the students at the time of assessing achievement (School 3).
The third dimension deals with the feedback and monitoring processes of citizenship learning. The results of this dimension present a willingness by the teachers to promote a synthesis by setting questions to their students leading to metacognition of citizenship processes.
There is constant feedback by the teacher. This is observable through directed questions, plenum synthesis, and other students" opinions. The teacher guides the class toward fulfillment of the planning without putting boundaries to the discussions generated among the students (School 10).
It is important to stress the diversity of pedagogical strategies and activities developed according to the specificity of the subjects, which allowed not only approaching the citizenship learnings from a common cross-curricular objective, but also enabling the generation of actions that favored the citizenship learnings from the curricular requirements belonging to the disciplines. Furthermore, the collaborative work and the co-construction of the didactic designs by the teachers of different schools must be highlighted, because they succeed from practical activities to incentivize a sense and action from and to the citizenship learning which account for the involvement and participation of the students in these learning dynamics.

Discussion and Conclusions
The present study shows the results of the implementation of Citizenship Education didactic proposals in the subjects of History, Geography and Social Science, Physical Education and Health, and Language and Communication at ten municipal schools located in Santiago, Chile. In general, the implementation of the didactic proposals delivered positive results by fulfilling the main objective proposed in the project, namely to generate citizenship learning opportunities to the children of the schools participating in the study.
Relating the effective implementation of learning and crosscurricular objectives related to citizenship education, the results show that making the class objectives explicit was done in different ways in the analyzed group of cases. For example, in some cases the teachers referred to the objective pointed out explicitly in the curricular instruments that guide their action, generally writing it on the board and making the students write it in their notebooks. In these cases, the teachers explained the concepts that would be brought up in the class, although they did not point out the objectives. The teachers also used other strategies to refer to the objectives, such as asking questions on previous knowledge. It is therefore seen that there is a class planning, and it is specified that the class will be centered on acquiring knowledge and citizen"s attitudes.
Additionally, the high proportion of students who participate actively in the exercises proposed by the teacher is stressed. The prevalence of a respectful climate that favors citizenship learning is highlighted, because it turned most of the students into protagonists of the educational process. This accounts for a greater empowering by the students, which can be explained by the predominance of group activities in which the internal organization of the group was promoted by assigning roles and functions. Another important aspect is the fact that the contents associated with the class were permanently linked with real experience or the students" own experience.
Regarding classroom climate that favors citizenship learning, the results show that, in general, the dialog spaces were constant during the whole session, with a permanent interaction of teachers and students; only in some schools there was an inadequate classroom climate where student discipline problems arose.
In respect to, the allocation and use of instructional time the evidence shows that in most cases the teachers used their time efficiently as a function of the teaching-learning process, following what is established in the classroom curriculum design, and carrying out the activities in a logical order. With respect to the interactions between teachers and students for citizenship learning, the evidence points out that in three of the six cases, feedback was permanent during the class. In some cases, the lack of the students" discipline management and control by the teacher hindered carrying out the feedback process of what had been learned. In relation to student involvement in the evaluative process of learning, in most cases the students were involved positively, answering the questions asked by the teacher or reflecting on the issues taught.
In some cases, the results show that the teachers" intent for synthesizing what had been learned is through asking questions from the students, while in others the teacher takes up once again the central concept of the class and states a definition. On the other hand, in six of the 15 classes observed in a school there was no synthesis, mainly because there was no good time distribution for each activity. This suggests that those teachers had difficulties in the full control of their teaching, and this can affect their students" learning.
On the other hand, the weakness of not incorporating the formal collection of evidence of what has been learned stands out as a weakness, so the teachers participating in this study did not make use of any assessing instrument other than asking oral questions from the group. Here it is important to bring up the importance of getting evidence through the application of appropriate instruments with respect to what has been learned, and use them in decision-making processes. It is also expected that in the evaluation processes the students will participate, through selfevaluation and co-evaluation, because learning in these activities can be the key to their later participation as citizens, based on their critical, self-critical, and autonomous ability for improving society.
As to the aspects to be achieved, the need to intend citizenship learning so that it will be significant to the students, the importance of using better the technological resources, and the importance of improving the classroom climate to generate significant citizenship learning is pointed out.
Finally, it is necessary to continue innovating and researching these kinds of issues which are central for school training, aiming at the future 196 participating of the students as citizens in the society to which they belong. Citizenship training may constitute a relevant and pertinent curricular content to advance in new collaboration forms between the Ministry of Education, the school and the university to benefit the students" integral training It can be pointed out that according to the learning achieved in the development and execution of innovations associated with the didactic strategies of three subjects of the Chilean school curriculum for 5 th grade, the specified objectives were achieved, taking as axes the understanding of the different concepts related to citizenship training, the participation of the students from their own experiences and lives, as well as their integration in the work of the teacher, who acts as a promoter of a classroom climate adequate for the teaching-learning process, allowing the students to become aware of the fact that they were inserted in a personal and collective learning dynamics (Callahan et al., 2010;Isaac, et. al, 2011;Lin, 2015;Ranson, 2012).
On the implementation of the didactic designs, it can be stated that the experience was successful, because it was possible to transform the pedagogical proposal into a significant learning experience in which the process allowed favoring the construction and the comprehension from the conceptual standpoint, facilitating the problematization around one"s own situations, the linkage with events related to social life, and above all, from the respect and valuation of the opinions of others in a constant climate of positive reinforcement and tolerant dialogue.
Considering this framework, it should be noted that the model proposed by the pedagogical innovation delivers specific guidelines and concrete actions to advance toward the development of citizenship training in the whole school system, enabling an integrated work sustained by the coconstruction of the Didactic Unit for each of the areas involved. This coconstruction was carried out by teachers of different school subjects, pedagogical coordinators of the participating schools, and professors, generating reflection and articulation instances in pedagogical-curricular decision making which strengthen citizenship education from the interaction of the educational actors and the incorporation of conceptions related to this new democratic view in schools.
As to the aspects to be achieved, it is possible to mention the need for strengthening the methodologic and didactic strategies, the citizenship learnings so that they may be significant to the students, strengthening their interaction with social reality and its importance for the development of the students is pointed out, linking these types of learning activities and exercises by optimizing the resources provided by the educational technologies, as well as involving students even more in the creation of citizenship learning experiences.
Finally, the creation of innovative spaces in the school for the development of citizenship education for our students becomes an ethical and moral imperative that the whole society must assume not only to advance learning for life, but also to strengthen the democratic system by means of a conscious, active, and reflexive-critical participation oriented to deepening the country"s primordial values, such as inclusion, respect for diversity, and the transverse guarantee of human rights.